The room pulsed with a spectral force. Thousands of rivulets of it flowed in from far beyond these walls, each with the faint signature of the soul that bled it. The streams coalesced into a river of energy with a hypnotic thrum and surge. The power gave the nightmare city beyond the castle walls cohesion and strength to the damned who shared the table.
Bulky shackles bound their ankles to the chair legs, which were bolted to the planks of the wooden floor. Thick leather straps girded their waists and buckled behind the chair, leaving only the captives’ arms free.
All performed the same ritual, though out of sync with each other. Small translucent spheres floated in a clockwise swirl above the table. The prisoner reached out with one pale, withered arm and plucked a sphere from the air. Each sphere held a different tiny image within it. Some were innocuous, just a view of a house or a person’s face. Others were still life pictures of terror. A knife coated in blood, a rabid dog, a horned demon.
One by one, the four placed the retrieved visions in the center of the table. Spheres rolled closer and joined, like two soap bubbles becoming one. The two visions inside melded and gave birth to a new combined image. A third, fourth, and fifth sphere joined and the resulting orb, and its image grew more complex and complete.
When finished, the vision in the sphere came alive, a small horrific holographic movie. Acts of awful brutality and torment played themselves out. Horrible creatures stalked the defenseless. Plagues and catastrophes swallowed innocent lives. At each terrifying tale’s conclusion, the picture skipped, reset to the start, and played again.
With the sphere complete, the four captives lowered their heads in unison and returned their hands to their armrests. Their fatigued chests sagged against the restraint belts. Long, labored breaths tried to renew their depleted bodies. The completed sphere rose from the table and joined the others that floated in slow orbits around the edge of the room. The four creators recharged. Then one lifted her eyes from the table, reached into the air, and with the impassive look of one forlorn of hope, began the exhaustive process again.
So ran Cauquemere’s nightmare factory, where captive dreamwalkers created new visions of the unspeakable, new invitations to Twin Moon City for those in the tactile world.
Cauquemere swept in through the main entrance, black leather duster marking his wake. His boot heels pounded the floor planking with each long, powerful stride.
“Hard at work!” he announced. “Splendid, splendid.”
The four did not acknowledge his arrival, all their focus on the orbs.
Cauquemere expected nothing more. He let slip a lupine smile as he passed the table. He ran a pointed, polished fingernail through the strands of one woman’s hair.
He much preferred this last decade’s arrangement. For thousands of years before St. Croix released him, he had created and delivered nightmares to the corporeal world whenever anyone with a mirror and a bag of salt commanded, and he had no choice in the selection of the victim. Those souls he terrified to death crossed over to his reality, a source of energy to drain.
Once St. Croix freed him to target people at will, he searched the world for those who shared a version of his gift for jumping between the tactile world and his own. Tapped into his power, these dreamwalkers could fashion personal terrors as horrifying as his own. Targeted with a stream of endless nightmares, their sanity broke. Blackmailed with threats of their loved ones joining them in Twin Moon City, the dreamwalkers spent their servitude summoning visions Cauquemere delivered to unsuspecting victims.
With evil imaginings spun at four times the petra loa’s rate, souls no longer entered his palace solo. They arrived wholesale. His dark spot in this reality grew into a personal city, a city where he made all the rules, a city that continued to expand.
He reached up and plucked one nightmare from its orbit around the room. As soon as it touched his fingertips, he saw the nightmare in its entirety. The dreamwalkers’ work never disappointed.
Bernie Ganzer hiked the waist of his pajama bottoms up across his rotund midsection. He sat on the edge of his bed and without thought placed his glasses in its accustomed nightstand location. He swept the strands of his comb over back in place and settled in beneath the covers.
His wife of fifteen years dozed on her side. He sidled up behind her and wrapped an arm around her waist. He parted the hair at her neck with his nose and gave her a light kiss.
“Good night, Jennifer,” he whispered.
“Good night?” replied an unfamiliar thick, raspy voice.
Bernie’s eyes snapped wide open. She grabbed his wrist with an iron grip. His heart went into overdrive.
The covers flew from the bed like they were pulled by wires. In one swift move, Jennifer flipped Bernie on his back and straddled him. Bernie looked up at a creature that was not his wife.
Jennifer’s eyes were wider, with upturned edges and a snake’s slit pupils. Red cilia flickered at the entrance of her flared nose. Her mis-shapened dog snout sprouted an uneven array of needle-like teeth. A black, forked tongue slithered around her lips.
“The night has just started,” she growled.
An uncontrolled stream of warm urine soaked the lower half of Bernie’s pajamas. He opened his mouth but could not scream. He flailed in panic to dislodge the creature. It didn’t flinch.
The mattress shifted beneath him. The sheets rolled in waves, a pulsating, irregular set of peaks and valleys.
The head of a brown pit viper ripped through the sheet at his side. It hissed like a steam vent. The snake slithered out and wrapped itself around his wrist. The cool, sleek scales passed over his skin and chills raced up his arm. Another round of silent screams. White foam formed on Bernie’s lips.
More holes opened in the sheet. A dozen snakes writhed through the tattered cotton. They wrapped his arms and legs like ivy. Their heartbeats pulsed against his skin.
“Nighty night, darling,” the creature said.
Its jaws opened wide. The needle teeth ran all the way down its throat. Its breath stank of rotted fish.
The creature struck. Rows of teeth clamped Bernie’s pudgy cheeks and tore his face from his skull.
Then the story repeated.
“Bernie, Bernie, Bernie,” Cauquemere said as he stared at the globe. “This just may be our last visit in your world.”
He’d been delivering nightmares to Roosevelt Street in Wichita for months now. Bernie had boarded the Insanity Express. Next stop, Twin Moon City.
Cauquemere’s maniac drones wouldn’t capture Waikiki Simon for a while. Plenty of time to make this delivery. Cauquemere closed his hand around the luminous sphere and vanished from the palace.
He reappeared in the darkened bedroom of Bernie Ganzer. The glowing orb in his right hand bathed the room in a soft, rose light. With silent steps, he glided to Bernie’s bedside. Bernie’s round outline lay under the covers inches from his wife. He made a low rumbling noise as he slept.
Cauquemere opened the drawer of the nightstand. He removed a black .38 Special revolver, Bernie’s sad attempt to defend against home invasion. He slid it into his victim’s hand. Bernie’s fingers reflexively tightened around the grip. Bernie snorted and then settled back into a comfortable drone.
Cauquemere tossed the orb of nightmares in the air and caught it with his inverted palm. He rested it on Bernie’s forehead. He released the sphere and it melted away. Bernie’s eyes twitched rapidly beneath his eyelids. A thin whimper escaped his lips. He gripped the pistol.
“So wish I could stay,” Cauquemere said. Bernie would be primed for a murder/suicide as he awoke next to what he thought was his wife-turned-creature. Cauquemere would be ready to pull him to Twin Moon City as his soul was released. The Prince of Nightmares never lost.
“Other orbs beckon for delivery,” Cauquemere said in overwrought apology. “Twin Moon City doesn’t populate itself.”
Cauquemere stepped back from the bed and returned to the land without dawn.
Chapter Ten
Pete reawakened at 11:30 in the morning. Daylight flooded his room and kitchen clatter arose from the restaurant below.
The dream spent in Twin Moon City had left him anything but rested. Rolling out of bed was an effort. The unhealed cut on his arm throbbed occasionally, but at least it wasn’t bleeding. If it wasn’t for that reminder, he’d have chalked the “wounded in both worlds” event up to some dream-within-a-dream. Instead, it was just beyond explanation.
He planned to devote his off hours today to figuring out what he was doing in Atlantic City, since he doubted he was called here to wash dishes. He dressed and headed downstairs.
Mama DiStephano sat at the table near the register in a white, short-sleeve top and jeans. Smoke curled from a cigarette at her fingertips as she read the New York Times through a set of half-glasses. A cup of coffee steamed next to two uncut bagels, some cream cheese, and a stack of clean dishes. Her long, black hair was down around her shoulders and she didn’t have on a hint of makeup, not that she needed it. She was Papa D’s age, but had managed the journey better, somehow able to keep trim surrounded by thousands of tempting calories. Pete thought that ten thousand dinner rushes ago, she must have been a knockout.
Her eyes turned to Pete as he came down the stairs.
“So, you’re up and around?” She had a thick accent that said New York City, born and raised.
“Good morning, Mrs. DiStephano.” It sounded unnecessarily formal having just rolled out of bed, but he wasn’t used to sleeping over his workplace.
“Come,” she said, putting down her paper and beckoning him over, “we’ll have a talk, Petey.”
Pete flinched at his new nickname, then girded himself for his real job interview. He pulled out a chair upwind of the cigarette’s wisp of smoke. Mama D noticed this and stubbed out what was left of the cancer stick.
“First, call me Mama,” she said. “Everyone does. Second, where did you come in from?”
“Ithaca,” Pete said. “I left college this semester.”
“So, college isn’t important to you? An education isn’t important?”
“No, no. It’s important, I just needed a break.”
Mama pulled the glasses off the end of her nose and looked deep in Pete’s eyes.
“You running from the law? I don’t need that kind of trouble.”
“No, Mama,” he responded. “I’m not running from anything. I hope that I am running to something.”
“Well, this is a strange place to stop along the way,” she said. “But it’s none of my business really. I just don’t want the cops breaking in here to arrest you in the middle of the dinner rush.”
“No trouble,” he said. “I just need to work.”
Mama smiled. “Oh, Papa will make sure you do.”
A clang came from the kitchen. Papa was already in the back, cooking. Mama D reached out and patted Pete’s hand.
“Don’t let Papa bully you. It’s just, well, the kitchen, it’s all he knows. Since he came from Italy as a boy, he’s worked in restaurants. First his family’s, now his own. It’s the center of his universe. He assumes it’s everyone else’s.
“And don’t let his language skills fool you. He knows what he is doing. God knows he butchers the English, but, tell you the truth…”
Mama D cupped her hand to her mouth and whispered.
“…he butchers Italian just as badly.”
Pete smiled.
“I don’t mind hard work,” he said. “It makes the night go by. I can take what he can dish out.”
“You’re like our son, Tommy,” she said. “You look like him, too. That’s probably why Papa hired you so quickly.”
“He doesn’t work the family business?” Pete asked.
“No, no,” Mama said, crossing her hands back and forth. “That cycle ends with Papa. This is no life for my Tommy. Long days, no vacations, small profits. I sent him to school. He is an engineer, back in the city. He’ll visit this week.”
“Looking forward to it,” Pete said. He really was. He liked the DiStephano family. They made him miss his own a little less.
“You want some breakfast?” Mama said.
“Oh, I’ll go out and get something. I wanted some fresh air and sunshine anyway.”
“Please,” she said. She took one of the bagels in front of her, divided it with one practiced slice, and put a liberal dose of cream cheese on both sides. “The extent of my cooking.”
She put the two halves on a plate and slid it across to Pete.
“Oh, no,” Pete said. “I really was just on my way out.”
Mama reached over and slapped the two bagel halves together, put a napkin around them, and forced it up at Pete.
“Then it’s ‘to go’,” she said. “Now eat.”
He took the bagel. Perhaps Mama missed having Tommy around even more than Papa did.
“Thank you.” Pete looked the makeshift sandwich over. “Bagels, huh?”
“Well,” Mama said, “they’re not Italian…” She pointed a thumb in the direction of the kitchen. “…but he’ll get over it.”
A pan clattered into a sink in the kitchen.
“See you at five,” Pete said, waving with the bagel.
Mama D’s nose was already back in the paper, and she waved without looking. Pete turned on his heel and headed out the front door.
The clear, sunny day promised warmth the fall season could not deliver. A sharp breeze brought the smell of salt in off the Atlantic. Pete zipped his coat all the way to the top and flipped his collar up over his neck. He wolfed down the bagel.
He wanted to see the ocean. The usual anxiety about getting lost raised its ugly head. He could see the bus station at the far end of the street. He could get there without confusion. One straight line. Deep breath. Go.
As he walked, he crossed Mediterranean and Baltic Avenues. Placing them on a map was impossible, but he did recall the purple colored properties on his old Monopoly board game. In real life, no one built houses or hotels on these sad streets.
He stopped at Atlantic Boulevard, the barrier that kept the oxidation of the old Atlantic City from tarnishing the glittering casinos. An Island Cab zoomed past. The crossed palm insignia flashed by waist high. The car hit a pothole and the doors rattled in their frames.
Pete dashed across the street and crossed an empty lot to the city’s signature attraction. At this hour, in this season, the famed boardwalk stretched out deserted. On top, two rows of angled gray boards formed an arrow that pointed south, to the wealth promised by the glowing towers of the Showboat and Taj Mahal casinos beyond.
Pete ignored the invitation. He descended a ramp on the far side and crossed the dunes to the beach. The onshore breeze picked up and salt mist speckled his lips. A stone jetty knifed out into the ocean. Waves beat themselves into oblivion against the dark rocks. He stopped short of where the sea spray dampened the boulders, sat down on the edge, and looked out at the ocean.
He took deep draughts of the crisp, invigorating air and enjoyed the tangy scent of the sea. The Steel Pier Amusement Park sat silent to his right, closed for the season. The skeletons of the Crazy Mouse coaster and the Ferris wheel stood out against the bright blue background. The passing cab on Atlantic Boulevard popped back into his head.
The two crossed palm trees came into focus. One black, one white. He remembered the crossed snake insignia on the doors of the Jeeps that machine-gunned Twin Moon City. They were identical designs, with Twin Moon City’s fanged snake heads replacing the palm fronds of Atlantic City. He shivered inside his jacket.
His dreams frequently took events of the day, chopped them into pieces, and rearranged them in convoluted combinations. But yesterday’s quick glimpse of the crossed palms
on passing cabs would not have merited a repeat run at the Subconscious Drive-In. A pretty uneasy coincidence.
The tender spot on his scratched forearm twinged. He awoke with an identical injury as the one he’d sustained in Twin Moon City. Non-coincidence Number Two.
Then there was Rayna, strange item Number Three. From their first dream encounter during the summer, they shared an instantaneous, spiritual connection. She was always more real than the rest of the dream. Everything else was a movie, but she had three dimensions. Everyone else was cold inside, but she had a heartbeat.
He’d figure all this out. There were lots of pieces, but he’d put them together. Something drew him here to put those pieces back together.
He had a feeling there was a deadline.
Chapter Eleven
“Petey,” shouted Papa D from the back of the prep line. “Potatoes.”
Pete stepped back from the grinding noise of the dishwasher. It was only 6:30 p.m., but an errant use of the spray hose had already soaked him through his jeans. He looked down the line at Papa D with a quizzical look.
“Downstairs!” Papa D said. He pointed past Pete with one hand while he browned meatballs with the other. “Get potatoes. Fifty pounds.”
“You got it.”
Pete left the kitchen for cool storage in the basement. At the base of the stairs, he threw a light switch. Rows of dry stores stretched under the building. There were pallets of sugar and flour, cases of spices and canned goods, and a rack of wrapped bread. Some stacks went from the concrete floor to the low, unfinished ceiling.
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